Public Library – James Fahey

April 10, 2023April 10, 2023

The Thrill of Exploring the Unknown

My daughter recently shared with me a meme that said this:

Some dream of fame.
Some dream of traveling to space.
I dream of having a secret door in one library that leads to another, hidden library.
– Elliott Blackwell

I immediately had two reactions. One was, “Yes. I get this.” The other was, “Why such a dream?”

The why question, predictably, turned into a bit of a rabbit hole. Why do some of us thrill at the very idea of a library in the first place? And then, why would the idea of a secret door in a library be exciting? And even more, why would a secret library behind that hidden door inside a library be even more exciting?

I imagine psychologists would have fun with this series of questions, but I think the answer is fairly simple: Humans are curious. Around the world, in any culture I’ve ever been exposed to, people want to add to their knowledge and understanding. Not for everyone, but for many people this is fundamentally true.

That curiosity explains the James Webb Telescope.

It also explains Q-Anon.

Knowledge, especially forbidden or hard-to-find knowledge, is thrilling.

Libraries are full of information – knowledge waiting to be explored. Much of what we find in libraries is ordinary knowledge – facts and theories that have already been vetted and tested, if not perfectly proven. Another big chunk of it, especially in public libraries, consists of the imaginings of people who want to explore humanity and the possibilities of the universe (we call this “fiction”).

When we visit a library, whether we read fiction or non-fiction, we expand our awareness and our ability to process what we know. (We do the same thing when we travel and immerse ourselves in other cultures, but that’s another essay.) Over time we learn how to distinguish between amazing facts (eg: images from the James Webb) and absurd beliefs (eg: Q-Anon), and both contribute to intellectual growth.

The idea of a secret library suggests knowledge and growth beyond the ordinary. The appeal of rare or hidden knowledge is manifest as a recurring theme in the Harry Potter books, the recent Netflix series “Wednesday,” and other teen / young adult literature. Young people appreciate this appeal instinctively.

The appeal of hidden knowledge is also the driving force behind scientists searching for gravitational waves, elementary particles, and the inner workings of biochemistry.

March 20, 2023April 9, 2023

Change – And Communication Required by Change

We’ve all seen it or experienced it: A substantial new change is introduced by a colleague, a boss, or some outside consultants and the people who are expected to actually implement the change stumble and make mistakes. Why does this keep happening? Here are four explanations (which are not necessarily mutually exclusive).

1. The people making mistakes are dumb. This is a surprisingly common explanation from the people who design and roll out a change. However, because change associated errors are so common, it could only be true if most people are dumb, and that simply is not the case. People only appear dumb because that which is obvious to the designer is not always obvious to the people who have to learn the change, regardless of how bright or dumb they are. In the vast majority of cases, blaming the people who have to carry out the change simply makes no sense. Blame is neither accurate nor productive.
2. The change is poorly explained. Despite thorough instructions, in many cases people simply may not have understood or remembered their instructions. Here’s why:
  - Not everyone learns the same way. Some people learn well through written instructions. Other people learn well through verbal instructions. Still others are highly visual and need to see a demonstration of what they are learning before they can remember anything. If instructions are provided in only one form, learning preferences for some portion of the people who need to execution on a change are likely to be missed. When a change is complex, it’s a good idea to provide instruction both in writing and verbally. Also, keep in mind that some people, no matter how well they understand instructions, can’t really master something new until they do it. Surprisingly, this is particularly true of bright people who think in abstractions – like Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Steven Spielberg. It is usually best to allow someone who is learning a change to practice it; showing them is fine, but having them do it is better. Of course, having them do it is slower and requires vastly more patience on the part of the instructor, but the reduced error rate in later actions is well worth the time and tolerance.
  - Sometimes the instructions are not clear or complete. This goes back to the earlier point that what’s obvious to the creator is not always obvious to the users. In the early days of computer programming, first iterations of products were designed by engineers who could not understand why users didn’t automatically understand how to use their products. This phenomenon also appeared in the early days of PC software, again in the early days of the internet, and then again in the early days of mobile devices. The industry’s quite brilliant and imaginative engineers understood how to use their products because they had designed them; the users, however, were flummoxed. The same thing can happen with process changes in any work environment.
3. People aren’t accustomed to change and habits are hard to break. In some work environments, especially environments in which people are expected to work robotically and follow the same patterns all the time, workers sometimes fall back on old habits and patterns. When tasks are reduced to mindless repetition, people who have been mindlessly following those patterns cannot be expected to quickly and easily abandon them. One way to avoid this problem is to reduce the expectation for robotic function in the workplace. People who routinely experience change and are routinely expected to be flexible find it easier to adopt change. In other words, the more change people experience, the easier it is for them to adapt to it when it happens.
4. The people who are affected by the change weren’t involved in developing or rolling out the change. People always find it easier to implement a change that they have had a hand in developing. For one thing, they understand why the change is designed the way it is. For another, they have probably been able to affect the design of the change so it suits them. Perhaps most importantly, however, they have had the opportunity to learn the change over time so, when it comes time to implement the change, the change feels familiar. In the end, if the people who are affected by a change have been involved in the development of the change, even if the change is not exactly as they would have designed it themselves, at least they are prepared to accept it and implement it as it is.

A final point about change and mistakes: sometimes mistakes reveal problems in the change itself, not in the people who are implementing the change. When a change is introduced, if people have trouble implementing it, perhaps the change itself needs further modification. People designing change should be prepared to change their changes as appropriate. Think of change as evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Here a few suggestions for avoiding problems when rolling out a change:

- Early in the process of planning a change, involve the people who are affected by the change. Help people become familiar with the changes so the changes are already familiar when they are rolled out. Listen to what the people have to say so you can adapt the changes to accommodate their needs.
- Provide both written and verbal instructions.
- Ideally, let people practice. At a minimum, provide them with supervision the first time they have to work with the change.
- Make change routine. A series of small changes may be easier to accommodate than a single big change.
- Allow for mistakes. As Alexander Pope said, “To err is human.”
- Learn from the mistakes people make. How can the changes be improved to avoid further mistakes? How can future changes be designed and rolled out such that they result in fewer mistakes?

December 22, 2022April 9, 2023

In a Team, Two Kinds of Communication are Essential

Do a Google search on “essential components of teamwork” and you’ll get a long list of articles on the subject. Teamwork is complicated and takes effort, but it can be much less complicated and take much less effort if the team communicates well.

There are two kinds of essential communication in teams. The first is vertical communication (top down and bottom up) and the other is horizontal communication (between teammates).

As obvious and intuitive as the above statement may be, poor communication probably causes more team failure than any other factor. Well-led teams are successful communicators in all directions on an ongoing basis.

Top down communication has to do with setting direction. Defining the goal. Everyone on the team must be working towards the same objective and each member of the team must prioritize that goal above self-interest. Top down communication is also how task assignments are determined, although this can, in good teams, be delegated to the team members to work out for themselves.

Bottom up communication is how team leaders get all kinds of information.

- - How well do team members understand the objectives and how committed is the team to achieving them? How efficiently is the team working? Are problems brewing?
  - How could the team work better? What improvements can be made so the team has a greater likelihood of success? What changes would result in less effort or lower costs?
  - What are customers saying about the product or service? What ideas do they have? How are their needs or interests evolving?
  - What could the team leader do better to ensure success of the team?

Horizontal communication may be the most important form of communication. This is the communication that allows team members to coordinate their actions in furtherance of their shared objectives.

When I was setting up a small US startup/subsidiary for a large Japanese company, we had a very aggressive time frame for achieving a set of goals. My VPs (software development, creative, operations, finance, and sales/marketing) and I would meet regularly to go over priorities and near term action items. Budget, labor resources, and skill sets in their respective departments had to be juggled to meet a series of milestones required to obtain further funding. Every time we encountered a problem or a change, we worked through those changes and the ways a change in one group’s output or activities would affect the other groups and their contributions.

Of course, each of the department heads had needs. Everyone was working against a tight schedule with limited resources, but by the time we ended each meeting, each team leader (and management team member) understood why resources were being allocated they way they were. Each VP understood what tradeoffs had been made and why. My role was not to make all the decisions, although imposing a decision was necessary from time to time. I talked as little as I could. My role was principally to guide the process, keep things moving (push for decisions), periodically remind everyone of the larger objective, and trust them to listen to and work with each other. We rarely achieved universal happiness over decisions, but everyone came away understanding why each decision was made and committed to executing with it. Working with that team was among the more enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life.

Libraries rarely operate under the time crunches that early stage companies face, but, like early stage companies, libraries have to achieve objectives with limited resources. Building teams that communicate well so everyone understands what is being done by whom and how their work affects everyone else is essential in any organization that aspires to efficiency and effectiveness in achieving goals. Including libraries. Building a culture of open, complete, and ongoing communication at all levels of the organization is essential to building a winning team.

November 18, 2022December 22, 2022

In a Team, Everything You Do Affects Someone Else

One of the first things I tell any new staff member at the library is, “Remember, each task you perform is affected by the way someone else did their tasks and will, in turn, affect someone else. You may perform your task alone but the task sits in a long chain of cause and affect. So perform your task knowing that how you do it affects a colleague or a patron.”

Henry Ford famously introduced the assembly line to automobile manufacturing. Each worker had a specific task that he (usually it was a “he,” until World War II came along) repeated again and again as part of a long chain of assembly. Economists and sociologists associated this atomization of tasks with a disconnect between workers and the products they produced, resulting in a steady erosion of quality because workers didn’t notice or care about the end product. Craftsmanship gave way to mechanical production and efficiency, and workers no longer knew or cared how the work they did affected either the work done by their fellow workers or the finished product that landed in the hands of customers.

Work in contemporary libraries can often result in the same disconnect. Staff hum along at their jobs simply going through the motions and passing along the results to the next person in the chain without thinking much about what the next person does or how their own work affects that person’s job. My admonition to new staff often seems to come as a surprise because we don’t think about our work as impacting others. Here are a couple of examples I have run across.

- Inter-library loans (ILLs) coming in from other libraries sometimes have little slips taped to the cover of the books with the name of our library on them. Undoubtedly, the slips helped the staff or volunteers at the sending library know in which bag or box to put the item so it would come to us. Very useful for them. However, the tags serve no purpose to us or our patrons who are borrowing the item. By leaving the slip taped to the item, the sending library is offloading the task of removing the slip (and perhaps damaging the cover of the item) from themselves onto us. Yes, it’s petty. I agree. But I hope you see the point.
- When putting returned non-fiction items onto shelving carts, some staff are careful to put the items in order as they load them onto the cart. Others are imprecise and just toss returned items onto the shelving cart in approximately the right order. By taking an extra second or two to be sure the items are in the correct sequence, one staff member would save other staff the time and trouble of first noticing and then fixing the error. In addition, such carelessness can compound the added work created because subsequent items added to the shelving cart may be placed incorrectly even if this staff member is making a concerted effort to be careful. When the cart goes out for shelving, the staff member or volunteer has to take the time and trouble to fix the errors. Another petty example, but the lack of consideration shows poor teamwork and reflects a culture of indifference to teammates.
- Back to the subject of ILLs…. Processing ILLs (packing outgoing and unpacking incoming ILLs) used to be a task assigned to adult volunteers who would come mid-day to do the job. The decision was made to switch to high school volunteers. High school students are only available after school, so ILLs get packed in the late afternoon. This has a couple of consequences.
  1. Outgoing ILLs are pulled from the shelves in the morning and the ILL driver picks up outgoing ILLs in the early afternoon. However, since ILLs don’t get packed until late afternoon, outgoing ILLs don’t get packed until the driver has left, so they sit in our library waiting to be picked up for more than 24 hours after they have been pulled from shelf. As a result, patrons in other libraries have to wait an extra day for the items they requested.
  2. Similarly, incoming ILLs are not unpacked until well after they have arrived and the staff who need to check them in can’t do their part of the work until the students are finished unpacking. Sometimes this puts the staff in an awkward time crunch to get their work done before the end of a shift. Also, notifications to patrons could be delayed since the notifications go out in batches and late processing means that notifications don’t go out until close to closing time or the next day. Late unpacking, therefore, is also an inconvenience to our patrons. Managing volunteers is a tricky business since they are doing us a favor and we need to accommodate their schedules, but for time-sensitive tasks the volunteer manager needs to put in a little extra thought and consideration in choosing volunteers and making arrangements. Or the staff has to do the job. The timing of these tasks affects patrons as well as other staff and that’s important.

These examples have relatively trivial consequences, but collectively they can have a substantive impact on the library’s work culture and the quality of patron services. Two relatively straightforward changes will facilitate repair of these broken systems and prevent similar issues from arising in the future.

1. Create an environment in which staff are aware of and care about the impact their work has on other people, including staff and patrons.
2. Cultivate an openness to change and communication about ways to improve. Avoid blame or finger pointing. Focus on process and consequences.

You’ll notice that both of these are driven by organizational culture. If staff feel that change and improvement are normal and healthy, then they will be less resistant to it. If they feel that other people are being considerate of them, they will be more welcoming of suggestions on how to better accommodate the needs of their colleagues and the patrons.

September 29, 2022December 22, 2022

Use Library “After Action Reviews” for Successes as Well as for Challenges

I grew up calling them “post-mortems.” You know, those horrible one-off meetings that are often held after something goes badly (eg: a grant application is denied or turnout for an event is abysmal). The objective is to figure out what went wrong and fix the mistakes. No one likes post-mortems because they mean facing failure and everyone comes away discouraged. The very name (“after-death”) is a turn-off. And libraries rarely have them.

And yet, I have always believed that constantly reviewing actions is essential to a healthy, productive organization. Such reviews are important both when something goes badly and when something goes very well indeed, thank you. I also believe they should be held for all sorts of events, large and small.

So let’s start with a name change. After Action Review (AAR) sounds more neutral and is a widely used term.

And let’s stop thinking of them as long, boring, discouraging meetings. Quick surveys and short, two paragraph reports posted on groupware for discussion are usually more useful forms of AAR than sit-down meetings.

I was pleased to hear a discussion of AARs as a core element of strategy on a recent episode of The Library Leadership Podcast. When learning becomes a core element of ongoing strategy, After Action Reviews can be seen as positive rather than negative exercises. Through them, the organization can learn from the community and from each other. Instead of resisting, staff and management embrace the practice and incorporate assessments into the organization’s culture. In addition to encouraging an outward looking orientation, AARs stimulate communication and idea sharing that is not merely reactive to negative circumstances but rather positive and forward looking.

Perhaps most importantly, AARs encourage constant change. Instead of doing things the same way every time year after year even as technology, community needs / interests, and staff skills change, AARs facilitate steady evolution from mediocre to good to excellent. They also make it possible to face failure when that happens (and it will) because staff will have the sense that positive outcomes outnumber the failures and failures are merely additional opportunities to learn, change and improve.

After an event, ask participants to quickly fill out a short survey. What did they like; what didn’t they like; what could be better? Get specific where you need to (speaker quality, etc), but make it easy for people to reply. After an event, ask staff to submit a short report on what went well and what could have gone better. Ask everyone for suggested improvements. Staff reports and summaries of surveys should be posted publicly on groupware so others can see, learn, and discuss as well.

For example, an AAR for response to a power outage might look something like this:

Management should make a point of reading AARs (another reason for keeping them concise) and responding. This way staff realize that the reports matter and can make a difference. We have all worked in environments in which suggestions and reports are requested or even required but no action is taken. Management sets the tone, so step up and interact.

September 12, 2022December 22, 2022

The Everywhere Library

Back when the 19th Century was becoming the 20th Century and Andrew Carnegie was funding the construction of libraries in communities across the United States, information came in the form of books and the best way to store and access books was in buildings.

That was over 100 years ago and the world of information has changed. Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely still need libraries and libraries still need buildings, and one of things found in those buildings should be books (lots of books).

However, printed pages are no longer the most widely used means for storing and presenting information. Therefore, libraries need to be more than buildings with books in them. There is no reason libraries should be confined to one place. There is every reason for libraries to be ubiquitous.

Libraries should be part of the local diner, local philanthropic organizations, the kitchen table, and the local park bench as much as they are part of that wonderful building many of us turn to for a good book. Digital access to library books and magazines, digital access to library programs and services, and library programs and services themselves can and should be found everywhere. We have the technology; we just need the imagination and the willpower.

December 17, 2021June 13, 2022

Podcasts on Library Leadership and Community Engagement

What are your favorite podcasts for staying current on library news and trends? I look for podcasts that focus on Community Engagement or Transformative Leadership in libraries. Here are a few that consistently include material relevant to one or the other (or both) of those subjects. If you know of another great podcast that addresses these issues, let me know using the “Contact me” link on the right.

Call Number with American Libraries presents “conversations with librarians, authors, thinkers, and scholars about topics from the library world and beyond.” Host Phil Morehart, communications manager for the American Library Association, is professional and focused on the topics, which he and his guests explore systematically and in depth. The length of each episode varies dramatically from 15 minutes to 45 minutes, though you should expect just over 30 minutes. The range in length seems to be a function of subject matter, the number of guests, and whether or not it’s a sponsored podcast. Many podcasts are not only purposeful but also fun, such as the late 2021 podcasts on Zombies (in October) and food (in November). Call Number is a great general-subject podcast for librarians and occasionally touches on topics related to community engagement, management, and transformational leadership.

Libraries Lead in the New Normal addresses strategic library leadership issues. It’s a little irregular, disorganized, and long-winded, but it is also highly relevant and insightful for library leaders. Many discussions look at how libraries fit in their communities and the role libraries play in society. Each podcast is 45 minutes to an hour long and includes one or more practicing librarians as guests. The hosts (R. David Lankes and Mike Eisenberg) ramble a bit, but the casualness also makes the podcasts entertaining and, again, the topics are fundamental to librarianship and the guests are interesting.

Library Leadership Podcast tends to adhere to important, day-to-day concerns about library management such as “Beating Burnout” and “Talking So Your Boss Will Listen”. It is tightly organized and professionally presented – it comes out regularly, the topics and the questions are prepared in advance, and the host (Adriane Herrick Juarez) does a good job of staying focused. Each podcast is about 15 minutes long and consists of an interview with one librarian.

May 25, 2021June 4, 2021

Outreach, Marketing & Engagement in Public Libraries

Librarians frequently use the terms outreach, marketing and engagement interchangeably. Many people, not just librarians, do. However, the terms are fundamentally different, and the underlying philosophy of how a library works and participates in its community affects which term applies. It is essential for librarians, especially library leadership, to understand the differences.

Outreach: The primary – almost exclusive – function of outreach is to increase awareness within an audience. Libraries conduct outreach to make community members aware of their services and programs. The underlying objective of outreach is to increase attendance or use of existing services and programs developed by the library for the audience. Usually this is accomplished through unidirectional communications such as posters in the library, e- newsletters, social media posts, handouts available through the circulation or reference desks and blurbs or articles in local news outlets. Outreach is fundamentally a PR function. It consists of outbound, unidirectional communication from the library to thecommunity.

Marketing: The function of marketing is rarely used by libraries. Marketing has three essential parts. First, marketing is a proactive effort to identify distinct audiences within a community. These audience might be defined, for example, by age, language, education level, gender identity, political views, reading habits or any combination of characteristics. Next, marketing requires the institution to make a proactive effort to understand the wants and needs of each group it serves and what motivates the people who make up that group. Young adults uncertain about their gender identities have information interests and reading / browsing habits that are different from the information interests and reading / browsing habits of retirees with grandchildren and health problems.

Marketing also assumes that there are segments of the community that the library does not reach well, and, because they are part of the community, we should connect with them. Marketing then assumes that we may not know the people in these groups as well as we think, and we need to understand them to provide them with the programs and services they want. Therefore, we librarians need to identify the various groups in our communities, and then we need to understand them.

Second, marketing uses what it has learned about the various segments of its community to change existing programs or develop new ones that meet the needs and interests of those segments.

The last, and not least, component of marketing is much like outreach. Marketing includes letting the community know about all these great programs and services that the library has developed for it based on what the library has learned about the various segments of the community.

Marketing is a continuous cycle of learning about the community, how it is changing and what new segments are emerging, and then adjusting the library’s mix of programs and services to meet the community’s current needs and interests. Outreach is just a piece of marketing.

Engagement: Both outreach and marketing start with predetermined assumptions about the role of the library in the community and those assumptions are made by the library. Engagement allows the community to have a bigger say in the role of the library in the community.

Engagement, like marketing, starts with identifying the constituencies within a community and then goes to them and asks them about their aspirations for their community. The community, not the library, is the center of the discussion. Instead of asking what the community wants from the library, which is the classic marketing question, the basic engagement question is what does the community want for itself. The library then has to figure out how to facilitate those aspirations.

Sometimes the best way to facilitate a community With engagement, the community, not the library, is the center of the discussion. aspiration will require the library to develop programs and services within the library with input from the community, but many times the best way for the library to facilitate a community aspiration will be to empower individuals or other organizations within the community to work towards related goals. Richard Harwood of the Harwood Institute refers to this as “turning outward”. Instead of the library looking at itself as an institution first, the library looks first and primarily at the community for a definition of what the library is and does.

The ALA has developed a program called Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC). LTC is an engagement program for libraries and includes tools and training for library staff. LTC (engagement) makes it possible for libraries to work with their communities to develop programs and services in conjunction with the community to achieve aspirations defined by the communities.

Libraries that engage with their communities not only provide programs and services defined and created by their communities, they also facilitate work done by others.

“Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services,

great libraries build communities.“

R. David Lankes

Outreach, therefore, is fundamentally the PR function of marketing. Marketing is fundamentally the cyclical process of learning about a library’s community, building and revising library programs and services to meet the needs of the community and then using outreach to make the public aware of those programs and services. Engagement, however, puts the community front and center and calls on the library not only to build library programs and services but also to enable and participate in programs and services developed by the community itself or by other institutions. Engagement makes the library a member of the community.

April 3, 2021April 5, 2021

Social Media as a Platform for Information Literacy Education by Libraries

Social Media is periodically used by political and social actors to arouse emotional responses to misinformation and disinformation to sow division and enhance loyalty to their own causes.

Public libraries are in a unique position to counter this practice by using the same social media tools to develop information literacy and critical thinking in the general public. A few carefully crafted, interactive campaigns could be used to engage community members and encourage them to

- Appreciate the benefits of distinguishing between demonstrable fact, emotionally titillating fiction and beliefs.
- Evaluate the context in which information is provided.
- Consider the objectives, priorities and potential biases of sources.
- Understand their own objectives in seeking, selecting and using information.

Such a campaign would require a combination of witty memes and skillfully crafted interactive tools that would both engage members of the public and instruct them in information literacy and critical thinking.

Done right, a social media campaign could develop information literacy in the public and enhance the brand of libraries as sources for and advocates of reliable, fact based information.

How would this be accomplished?

To begin with, public libraries are good at providing information, so the instinct is to take a “This is a fact and that is not” (we are the authority) approach to service. However, these days information changes and spreads at a rate that renders this approach impractical. As an alternative, consider the old adage, “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to catch fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” Public libraries need to teach information literacy to the public rather than attempt to be information literacy for their communities. This has the added advantage of keeping libraries out of the fray. We can certainly have our opinions, but we make it clear that as institutions we are teaching choice, not taking sides.

In addition, public libraries need to reconsider the classroom paradigm. When teaching information literacy, classrooms are fine for K-12 or academic libraries where students are a captive audience and receptive to the instruction via classroom approach. The general public, especially working adults with kids, however, are not likely to embrace giving up an evening or a series of evenings to go to the library, sit in a classroom and be instructed on something as esoteric as information literacy.

Teach me about writing a will? Fine.
Teach me how to avoid a propaganda rabbit hole?
That’s not going to happen to me, so why waste my time?
Besides, I hated school
and I have no desire to sit in a classroom again.

Social media is a viable option. It reaches the community in their spare time wherever they happen to be, even if it’s just the 15 minutes they’re on the bus to the train station or waiting for their daughter to get out of soccer practice. It’s interactive so it can take advantage of basic pedagogical principles, and it can be entertaining so it keeps them engaged.

January 8, 2021April 3, 2021

Social Media Marketing: Using Your Library Outreach Budget Effectively

In the age of COVID, libraries have turned increasingly to social media to get the word out about ongoing activities. Patrons are no longer coming into the library building, so how do we tell them about all the stuff going on in virtual library space? A small social media marketing budget can increase the effectiveness of outreach by over 1,000%. This post presents a simple case study of inexpensive, effective social media marketing that can be applied to most public and academic libraries.

Many libraries have turned to Facebook (FB) posts to announce events, programs and services. We must ask, however, are libraries really reaching their patrons by merely posting their announcements on Facebook?

If a library serves a community of 50,000 residents, maybe 1,000 (2%) of them follow the library on FB. Worse (and many libraries don’t realize this) few FB posts reach even half of the people who follow the library. In fact, in most cases a library is lucky if any given post reaches 20% of its FB followers.

Given that math, in a community of 50,000 people, only 200 (0.4%) residents will see any given post. If a library announces a big event, such as an interactive webinar on keeping kids engaged with school during the pandemic, the library will reach only a tiny percentage of the community with its announcement. Furthermore, many of those who are reached may not be parents of elementary school age kids. If a third of the people reached by the post are too young or too old to have children, out of 50,000 residents only about 80 people who might possibly be interested will see the announcement.

What if there were a way to reach many more interested residents for as little as $50 per week?

Targeted boosting of Facebook posts is a possible solution. Targeted boosting on FB allows libraries to make sure that community residents meeting selected demographic characteristics see library posts. The boost for each post can be targeted differently depending on the audience for the library service being promoted.

For example, I advised NCC Japan on how to improve their outreach to their approximately 750 FB followers. NCC Japan works with Japan Studies scholars and librarians in the USA and Japan to find and exchange academic resources. People who know about NCC are enthusiastic about its services but not all know the full gamut of services available through NCC. Typically, each FB post reached only 100 to 125 followers.

In NCC Japan’s case, for $2 per day over a five day period in April 2020, we boosted one FB post. Doing so made sure that the post reached 538of their 750 Facebook followers who logged onto Facebook during those five days. By boosting this post we more than quadrupled the reach.

I also advised NCC Japan to boost some of their posts to Facebook users who had never heard of NCC before but might be interested in its programs and content.

For $10 per day over a five day period, NCC Japan boosted a post to reach more than 17,000 Facebook users who were selected based on geography, education, profession and academic interest. None of the 17,000 who saw the boosted NCC FB post were current followers of NCC. Over 700 people engaged with the post, clicking through to NCC Japan’s FB page, and many became NCC FB followers. Even those who did not engage with the ad at least had NCC’s name and logo presented to them, which will make them more receptive to future NCC boosted posts.

One time advertisements are usually not enough to attract all the possible people who might be interested in a particular library program or event. However, each boosted FB post will reach far more of those people than a post that is not boosted, especially if the objective is to reach people who are not currently engaging with the library but could be. Over time, more of those unengaged community members will become engaged community members.

If libraries consider the labor and other resource costs that are spent on programs, dedicating a small budget to promoting greater awareness of and participation in events and programs is an excellent investment. If it costs $500 to organize an event and 100 people attend, the cost is $5 per person. If a $50 promotional budget is added and 10 more people attend, the cost per person is still $5, but 10 more people have participated. If more than 10 additional people participate, the cost per person begins to shrink. Furthermore, of course, when new people attend an event, it is possible to promote additional events and get them even more involved in the library.

It is not enough to simply post on social media. It must be done effectively. One of the remarkable things about social media marketing is just how inexpensive it is. Effective social media marketing simply requires a small budget, some expertise and practice.

1. These are gross estimates that will vary dramatically from community to community. A little research should produce more accurate figures for any given community.

2. Pew Research. 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/16/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/

3. IBID

4. US Census. 2019. QuickFacts United States. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 Accessed Jan 12, 2021

5. Act for Youth. U.S. Teen Demographics. http://actforyouth.net/adolescence/demographics/ Accessed Jan 12, 2021